Sanders comes clean to Trump: Men go to the bathroom, too

Sen. Bernie Sanders is campaigning for president on an unchanging message that he’s crafted for half a century: That corporate power is gnawing away at ordinary Americans’ lives and that concentration of wealth is a national crisis.

Still, vulgar remarks by Donald Trump after Saturday’s Democratic debate were enough to take Sanders off message on Wednesday in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, as the Vermont senator displayed an unusual flash of wit.

Trump has mocked Hillary Clinton for making a restroom visit at a break in the two-hour debate. She was late getting back to her podium. “I know where she went and it’s disgusting,” Trump said afterward. “I don’t want to talk about it. No, it’s too disgusting. Don’t say it, it’s disgusting. Let’s not talk about it.”

Sanders shot back: “He must have a very unusual relationship with women.”

In an unusual aside — Sanders doesn’t like to talk much about himself — the Vermont senator delivered a confession: “I also went to the bathroom. I’ve got to admit it.”

Apparently, Sanders added, Trump “has discovered that women go to the bathroom and it’s very upsetting to him.”

Trump continued to talk about it at a Grand Rapids, Michigan, rally. He joked that Hillary Clinton had been “schlonged” by Barack Obama in their 2008 contest for the Democratic presidential nomination. “Schlong” is a Yiddish slang term for the penis.

Not so, Trump tried to argue in a tweet on Wednesday. He took out after the mainstream media and said: “Once again, #MSM is dishonest. Scholong is not vulgar. When I said Hillary got ‘Scholonged’ that meant beaten badly.”

Trump has, as usual, not checked his facts. The Obama-Clinton contest went on from the first week of January to the first week of June, with each candidate coming back to win states following losses. Each candidate garnered more than 16 million votes. As Clinton later put it, her candidacy created 16 million cracks in the “glass ceiling” blocking the election of a woman as president. It was a very close contest.

In this year’s race, debates between Sanders and Clinton have centered on issues. No time for bathroom humor.